AAU’s Seth Rogoff and literary translator, Alex Zucker, discussed Zucker’s 2016 translation of Love Letters in Cuneiform originally written by Tomáš Zmeškal, at the AAU library on May 6. The backdrop of old book shelves and hand painted dark wood beams set the tone for the complicated love story, filled with unspoken truths and pained promises.
The novel takes place in Prague during the 1940’s, before the start of the second world war, and journeys through the 1990’s, a decade that marked the end of the country’s time under communist rule. The “book of the 90’s,” as Zucker put it, is the story of a man, his wife, and daughter and introduces themes of domestic violence, experiences of political prison, torture, and the Americanization of Prague in the early 90’s.
Zucker read two excerpts from the novel. The first describes a robber who enters the home of a baker, only to end up running to the police himself after finding what appeared to be the limbs of a dismembered woman sprawled across the kitchen counters.
“He wasn’t seeing what he saw, he saw what he thought he was seeing,” read Zucker from his English translation. Tomáš Zmeškal’s intentional repetition and the straightforward, removed narrative style of the novel excelled in Zucker’s English translation.
“The translation has to stand on its own,” said Zucker. “Translating isn’t a word by word thing… it takes lots and lots and lots of revisions.” He further elaborates that the aim is to not just to translate the words, but capture the style and become comfortable making decisions about what stylistic outcome an author achieves in Czech.
Translations from Czech enrich English, said Zucker, urging people to learn the language. Wordplay and precise terminology targets nuances in storytelling. Everyday Czech tends to use a much larger vocabulary even than academic English.
Zucker originally learned Czech to work in human rights. After the fall of communism in 1987, he began to rethink his application. He learned to translate at the Czech News Agency (ČTK) working on pieces from every beat.
Zucker thanks his diverse range of early translating jobs for his ability to comfortably translate many different styles in Czech. He worked for the Czech auto brand Škoda, translating their history sections, for an ATM network, art exhibitions, artists biographies, and an architecture magazine in addition to his early work at the wire agency.
“Before I was a translator I was a reader,” said Zucker. He appreciates a diverse reading list and described how watching Czech films and engaging with the local culture was essential in understanding nuances in the Czech language.
Zucker commented on how there are many generalizations about Czech literature because there are so few works that have been translated into English. Currently, he exclusively pitches women authors because of the disparity in English translations of female Czech writers, “an issue in pretty much every language,” he said.
Today Alex Zucker is able to pick carefully which novels he wants to translate, and he is working on a number of other projects with Love letters in Cuneiform author Tomáš Zmeškal.
Love letters in Cuneiform was the first in a hopeful series of literary readings with Czech translators, giving English speaking AAU students a unique opportunity to engage with Czech literature, and continue to delve into the rich language and culture in Prague.
